A long day today. I had to drive to Richmond, VA, where I spent most of the day. I didn’t get home until after four, but I managed 3,242 words in just about three hours. My two-day total is 6,898, which ain’t bad.

Here’s an excerpt from what I wrote today, from Chapter 2, Arrows of God:

Patience was something else he’d almost forgotten. Living in America, the land of instant gratification, could do that to you, make you forget the best things were the things you waited for with patience. He was fifty-eight years old, far above the life expectancy of the men of this country, even the country of his birth, and if it took him another decade to do what he needed to do, to find the man he wanted to kill, he would wait. With infinite patience.

Above him, quite suddenly, the night screamed, but he didn’t move. He could sense the nervous shuffling of the man at his back. Below, in Mazar e Sharif a mushroom of fire exploded, then another and another.

In Russian, Abdullah said, “Bozh’ya strelki.” Arrows of God.

He nodded in agreement as the explosions lit the city in predetermined locations, some of which he and Abdullah had provided to the CIA. The noise was distant, muffled, and reached him several seconds after the silent flares on the landscape. Satellite guided bombs from B-2s or Tomahawk missiles were modern arrows of a sort, aimed from a distance and true on their mark.

The United States had begun exacting revenge for September 11, 2001.