Plains Crazy by J.M. Hayes

was telling her.
    â€œThere was a blond woman at the door when we opened this morning. Real short hair. Mean looking, my teller said. Said she didn’t want to open, only it was time and we’ve never been robbed before.”
    â€œYes,” Mrs. Kraus scrawled away.
    â€œYes? It was a bomb?” Finfrock’s voice rose.
    Line one stopped ringing and Wynn Some scowled at her. “You never answered that,” he accused. “It might of been important.”
    â€œWe think she was an Ay-Rab in disguise. My teller, Lucy, found her note on the floor where she’d slipped it under the door. Read it after she let that woman in and just before she got handed the bomb. Then the robber demanded money. Hundreds. Probably part of a plan to copy them and use counterfeit bills and ruin our nation’s economy and destroy the western world.”
    â€œA note?” Mrs. Kraus asked. “Do you have it?”
    â€œWhat do I need a note for?” Wynn Some wanted to know. “Oh, and have you seen Mad Dog?”
    â€œWhat’s going on, Mrs. Kraus?” This time it was the chairman himself asking. It didn’t matter. Mrs. Kraus had tuned out everyone but the man on the other end of the phone line.
    â€œYeah. I got it right here,” Brown said. “It says: ‘We now target your financial institutions. Capitalism cannot exist without banks. As you target the economy of Iraq, we target the Farmers & Merchants of Buffalo Springs. You seized Iraq’s oil fields. Now we will control yours. Shut them down at once. Close your service stations. No petroleum products are to be sold in Benteen County or our next strike will deliver more than mere shock and awe. Fear us and obey.’”
    His voice paused and Mrs. Kraus took that to mean he’d finished the note. “That all?” she demanded. “Isn’t it signed by somebody who’s claiming responsibility?”
    â€œSay, you do know your stuff,” the manager conceded. “There’s the name of some terrorist front at the bottom of the page.”
    â€œWhat is it?”
    â€œI was gonna get to it,” Brown grumbled. “Let’s see, here it is. ‘We are a brotherhood laboring to quench America’s evil designs and aggressions.’”
    â€œAnd none of your note is capitalized,” Mrs. Kraus said. Line one was ringing again. She continued to ignore it. “Except for a few words at the end. What are the capital letters, Mr. Brown? Read them to me.”
    â€œWow,” Brown told her. “I never knew you were such a professional. You’re right again, though. There are a few capitalized letters down there. I just figured whoever wrote it, they must be uneducated heathens and that’s why they only capitalized a few letters at random, but Jesus. You’re right. Those capital letters, they spell al Qaeda.”
    â€œMy God!” the supervisors chorused as they saw Mrs. Kraus add the dreaded name to her notes. Wynn Some hadn’t been paying attention. He’d finally decided to make himself useful and answer line one himself.
    â€œHey,” he said. “You won’t believe this. Somebody blew up the bank.”
    ***
    Judy sat on her bike in the middle of Jackson Street and told herself things like that didn’t happen in Benteen County.
    The Farmers & Merchants had already stopped burning. Dust and greenbacks were beginning to settle, some carried toward her on today’s gentle version of the constant winds that swept the Plains looking for a mountain range or a hill, or even an occasional prairie dog mound, to slow them down.
    A crowd was gathering in the street. Maybe a dozen people—all the merchants and shoppers who’d been in nearby buildings on this business day. There wasn’t a lot of business in Buffalo Springs anymore, so it wasn’t much of a crowd.
    â€œAnyone killed?” someone called.
    â€œNo. Not even hurt to