National Security

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Mahir Halibi saw blood as filth. But in war, such filth was plentiful — and an absolute necessity.

The young Saudi wiped his hands on a shop towel, leaving a fresh crimson streak on the grimy cloth. The night guard — a Hispanic man about his age with a large belly and new running shoes, lay facedown, eyes slammed wide as they had been when Halibi’s blade caught him by surprise. A dark pool blossomed on the concrete next to the obscene wound that opened his neck. White cords from an iPod trailed from his ears, one cord cut neatly in two and partially embedded in the gore. Glistening flies from three stinking garbage trucks buzzed around the dead man, crowding his sightless eyes for a spot to lay their eggs.

It had taken Halibi and his two cousins over two hours of constant, backbreaking labor to unload three hundred and sixty bags of fertilizer from two moving vans and distribute them — not nearly as long as the year it had taken to collect them in small purchases across the Rocky Mountain west.

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