Blowback (Scot Harvath, #4)

by Brad Thor

he noticed that this building had the same danse macabre under the eaves as the one across the street. It reminded him of a story he had once read about what the French did with the bodies from the Holy Innocents cemetery when it got too full and they needed to make room for new arrivals. Originally, they placed them in charnel houses adjacent to the church, but they didn’t have enough space to keep up with demand. So they started quietly buying up buildings in the neighborhood to use as undisclosed charnel houses. Sometimes they’d wall the bodies up and rent out the apartments to help recoup some of their costs. Sometimes they’d place the bodies on the top two floors and rent the floors beneath. Everything was going just fine until the walls and floors began rotting away and dead bodies started falling into people’s living rooms. Even building to building, corpses were falling through the walls. At this point, Paris caught a break. They had pretty much stopped mining stone under the Right Bank because they were afraid that all of the tunnels had weakened it close to the point of collapse. It was the perfect place to transfer the contents of the charnel houses. They hauled the dead out in the dark of night by the wagonload, stacked their skulls and bones throughout the tunnels, and voilà, the Paris catacombs were born.

Not all Muslims are terrorists, but without fail all terrorists are Muslims. There’s a war raging within their religion. The moderate Muslim faith is under siege by the Wahhabi extremists of Saudi Arabia.

the similarities between the mythical vampire and the symptoms of human beings infected with the rabies virus. “Those similarities are astounding. Not only do vampires bite people, but so do human beings affected with the rabies virus. Vampires are said to seduce women; rabies sufferers are known to be hypersexual. Vampires attack people; rabies sufferers often show a dramatic increase in aggressive behavior. Vampires roam the earth at night; rabies patients suffer severe insomnia due to interrupted sleep cycles. Vampires are erratic and suck blood; rabies patients often experience convulsions and bloody frothing at the mouth. Vampires hate garlic; rabies patients are often hypersensitive to strong odors, especially garlic. Vampires avoid mirrors as they do not cast a reflection; rabies sufferers cannot bear the sight of their own reflection and avoid any object that might cast a reflection. Vampires are afraid of sunlight; rabies patients often develop acute photosensitivity. Finally, vampires are afraid of holy water, and rabies patients often develop hydrophobia.”

“Rabies is one of the oldest infectious diseases known to mankind. Accounts of it date all the way back to Asia in 2000 B.C. but the best detailed medical accounts date from around 300 B.C.”

“Contrary to popular belief, rabies is not solely transmitted by the bite of an infected host. There have been three modern confirmed cases of transmission without biting. The first involved a person inhaling virus particles in a bat cave; the second involved laboratory workers who, while using a power saw to cut the tops of skulls off rabies-infected corpses, created an aerosol and inhaled rabies particles; and the third involved a cornea transplant from an infected donor.”

They’re all Muslims.” “That’s not the way the Sunnis see it. To a good number of them, the Shia are even worse than Western infidel Christians.

“Most of the terrorism,” he tried to explain, “all that militant, radical fundamentalist Wahhabi crap out of Saudi Arabia, is Sunni. The only major Shia problem out there is the Iranians.”

time, the Prophet Muhammad had created his own earthly kingdom or caliphate. After his death, his successors were known as caliphs, and it was their job to lead the worldwide Muslim community, or ummah. But after the fourth caliph, Ali, was assassinated in 661, a schism erupted between the Sunni and the Shia. The Sunnis believe that Muhammad had intended for the Muslim community to choose a successor, or caliph, by consensus to lead the caliphate, while the Shia believe that Muhammad had chosen his son-in-law, Ali, as his successor and that only the descendants of Ali and his

“What do you know about the beginnings of al-Qaeda?” he asked. “Not much. I know that bin Laden fought in Afghanistan against the Soviets and that when he returned home to Saudi Arabia he was extremely unhappy with the Saudi Royal Family. Somehow al-Qaeda came from all of that.” “Their roots go a lot deeper and cover a piece of terrorism history most people are unfamiliar with. You see, when the Soviet Union invaded predominantly Muslim Afghanistan in 1979, bin Laden was one of the thousands of devout Muslims who heeded the call to help repel the invasion. As the son of one of the wealthiest men in Saudi Arabia, bin Laden brought with him quite a sizable bank account, and it’s here that we get to the part that a lot of people don’t know about. “Along with a man by the name of Sheik Abdullah Azzam, bin Laden founded the Maktab al-Khidamat, or Offices of Services, in 1984. It served as a recruiting and command center for the international Muslim brigade that fought throughout Afghanistan. “It’s rumored that the MAK trained, equipped, and financed anywhere between ten thousand and fifty thousand mujahideen, or holy warriors, from more than fifty countries. The MAK had offices around the globe, including Europe and even in the United States. Bin Laden’s fame grew like wildfire throughout the Islamic world, and soon all sorts of interesting people were coming to see him. One of these visitors, according to Yuri, began to mold bin Laden’s vision of what he could do on a worldwid...

bin Laden increasingly wanted to focus on this new idea of ‘global’ jihad. He had come to believe that not only was jihad a personal responsibility, but all Muslims were honor bound to establish true Islamic rule in their own countries by any means necessary, even violence. Concepts like democracy and the separation between church and state were anathema to

“With the help of the aforementioned outside influence, bin Laden began sketching out rough plans for his global al-Qaeda organization in 1987, but he couldn’t bring himself to split with Azzam and the MAK, no matter how divergent their ideas. Over the next several months, bin Laden held many meetings with a certain shadowy international figure who, according to Yuri, urged him to go his own way, but bin Laden either couldn’t or wouldn’t listen. It wasn’t until the next year, when Azzam was assassinated under very mysterious circumstances, that al-Qaeda broke off from the MAK and threw down the gauntlet to the rest of the world.”

single Muslim government strictly ruled by sharia—the religious and moral principles of Islam—the law of the Muslim land so to speak. Essentially what they want to see created is another Muslim caliphate. One nation, under Allah, headed by a caliph who would be the recognized leader of the entire Islamic world.”