Terrorist targets?

The VIP tour of Ford Island was nearly over. "Any questions, ladies," Lt. Basel Zakly Faris, USMC, said from behind the wheel of a Jeep.

Fatima bin Laden had questions, but they would wait for a more private occasion.

"Actually, yeah," her friend Jennifer Hira said from the back seat, where she rode holding hands with Baz's Marine buddy Lt. Joe Matsuo. "I'm, like, shocked you guys are guarding an actual terrorist here. I'm not really into the news, you know, but what interest could a Muslim terrorist possibly have in Hawaii? I mean, there's nothing here but sand and palm trees!"

Fatima the would-be terrorist bit her lip.

"You want that one, Baz?" Joe said.

"Oh, there's plenty of targets here," he said, parking at the Navy brig. "Hawaii has all four branches of the military, plus Coast Guard. And America's entire Pacific Command is headquartered at Camp Smith. Or if you just wanted to kill a lot of people, Waikiki or downtown would be easy places."

"It just gives me the creeps thinking a terrorist is inside," Jen added. "But isn't that kind of a weird name, Muhammed Resurreccion?"

"Weird name for a weird dude," Joe said.

He explained that Muham-med Resurreccion's father was Catholic, his mother Muslim. While their hearts and bodies burned with passion, their different faiths did not matter. Little Muhammed went to mass with his father, to the mosque with his mother. He found both perfectly fine religions with much in common. But as the years wore on, his parents' passions turned increasingly to their religions. Love and tolerance retreated. From the time Muhammed was about 9 until he was 14, the Resurreccion home was the tableau for a reenactment of the Crusades. One day as his mother was dressing to take Muhammed to prayers, his father got into a righteous holy war uproar and stabbed her to death. He was arrested, of course, but Muhammed's Muslim cousins and uncles broke his father out of the Zamboanga city jail and tortured him for a while before letting him die.

Muhammed went to live with his mother's family, and in his heart soon became a Muslim. It wasn't just a choice of religions. It was Muhammed's sense of right and wrong, learned from both faiths, that was offended by the economic and legal disparity between Catholics and Muslims. In the eyes of the Philippine government, Muslims were not recognized as full citizens. Birth records were not even maintained for them.

So, Fatima thought, they knew the facts of her uncle's friend's life well. She was there to help write the next chapter, freedom or martyrdom.

"If you're free this evening," Baz whispered as they said good-byes, "the young imam I mentioned is preaching."

So it was that Fatima first met Imam Ibrahim al-Shakr, which one day not far away would lead to his abduction.