Don't Order Dog_ 1(58)

Guwahati, Assam, India 9/25

Al Jubail, Saudi Arabia 10/5

Port Harcourt, Nigeria 10/16

Puerto La Cruz, Venezuela 10/25



As Tom stared at the list of cities and dates on the paper, the memory of the night at the bar a few weeks earlier came slowly back to him. Against his better judgment, he’d ended up having more than a few drinks that night, and the details were now embarrassingly hazy. He remembered sitting next to an older man at the bar – what was his name? Skip? – and talking about some letters one of the bartenders had received. He also recalled reading the story in the college paper – how the letters had unexpectedly started arriving a little more than a month earlier, their cryptic, ranting tone, the mocking anonymity of their author, and perhaps strangest of all, the obscure photos of the author himself. Tom and the old man next to him had discussed it for some time, and he now vaguely remembered staggering over to where the letters were hung and jotting down the places and dates where they’d come from on the notepaper in his hand.

Unfortunately, he couldn’t remember exactly why he’d done this.

Tom wadded up the piece of paper and started to toss it into the trash when a nagging thought suddenly stopped him. Was there something more to this than he remembered? Hadn’t the old man said something else? Something about terrorism? He hovered in the doorway trying to recall before finally relenting to his curiosity. Cursing at himself under his breath, he turned and paced back into his office.

Dropping the note on his desk, Tom sank back into his chair and pulled up an online search engine on his laptop. He glanced at the first city and date on the list before typing “Guwahati terrorist attack September” into the search engine. The screen instantly flickered with the first of over 164,000 results. Scrolling through the first few pages, Tom found a few general articles on cases of terrorism in the city in the northeastern state of India, but nothing on any recent incidents. He typed in “Guwahati homicide September” and a fresh list of over 200,000 results popped onto the screen.

“Jesus,” he muttered to himself as he scrolled through the first few pages of results. He skimmed through several articles, several of which were written by human rights organizations. One article accused the local police of outright murder and cited a recent incident where a driver was pulled from his vehicle for speeding and mercilessly beaten by several officers before being tossed into a lake to drown. Another article described a freak accident involving two vehicles that collided and caught fire near a local market, killing a young Italian scientist. Tom shrugged dismissively and moved on. While the stories were tragic, he knew firsthand from his tours in the Marine Corps that police corruption and freak accidents were an everyday reality in third world countries like India.

Deciding Guwahati was a dead end, Tom glanced at the next location and date on the piece of notepaper and typed “Al Jubail terrorist attack October”. To his surprise, the search engine came up with a fraction of the results. Apart from a few cases of murder, including two men who were gunned down in public for displaying homosexual behavior, Tom found nothing of particular interest.

After a few more minutes of searching, he concluded Al Jubail must be one of the safest cities in the Middle East, at least for heterosexuals, and went to the next

city on his list.

The search results for “Port Harcourt terrorist attack October” exceeded 1,200,000. Tom shook his head as he started scanning through first few pages of results. He was beginning to think the entire effort was a waste of time when, at the bottom of the second page, a headline caught his attention.

“Terrorist Explosion Kills Petronus Energy Executive”

Tom clicked on the link and the browser immediately jumped to the bright colors and flashy graphics of an international news agency’s website. A large image of a luxury hotel atrium littered with dust and debris appeared beneath the headline. Inset in the corner was a photo of an older, distinguished-looking man in a suit and tie smiling at the camera. Tom read the caption beneath the image.

“The scene from inside the Garden Landmark Hotel in the city of Port Harcourt this morning, where an explosive device planted inside a guest room killed Shahid Al Dossari, a Director of Research for Petronus Energy.”

Intrigued, Tom grabbed a notepad as he quickly scanned the article. The first thing he noted was the date. The attack on the hotel had occurred on the 19th of October – just three days after the letter at the saloon had been dated from the same city. The second thing Tom found odd was the anonymity of the terrorists themselves. Contrary to most such attacks, no one had claimed responsibility for this particular bombing. He scratched down the name of the victim and the name Petronus before searching under the fourth name on the list.