The Parable of the Goats

Passed as it was—from mouth to ear to soul, in that small village near the Black Mountains—word of the humiliating torture, mutilation, murder, and unforgivable desecration of young Saladin's body (who, it was widely known, had spent his entire life hearing the greatly exaggerated tales of his father's jihad against the Soviets, and so, with much trepidation, decided to join up with a small group of melancholic militants, cursed from childhood with the knowledge that they were meant to die violently, at the cusp of manhood, before ever having tasted the bitter nectars of first love) eventually reached the hairy ears of his giant father, Merzagul. Despite his incredible size, Merzagul was a man with an infamously puny heart, so puny, especially compared to the massive width of his chest, that many doctors from various cities all across the nation deemed his breathing life to be a minor medical miracle, something akin to a small tractor engine propelling the flight of a B-52 strategic bomber. And so it was that after Merzagul caught word of the murder of his only son, his puny heart pumped into overdrive and led him to the studded handle of his father's legendary scimitar, which had once chopped down three hundred British colonizers back in the benevolent days of Kipling and Forster, when white men would fight on the earth like mere mortals—not as they did now, from thousands of miles above, from the very heavens themselves, perched upon behemoths of steel and light, watching their targets below, even in the darkest of nights, hour upon hour, spying and recording and listening, until one fateful day or night, when the white men in the clouds would rain down their fire, and decide, with the flick of a finger, the twitch of an eye, the shiver of an asshole, whether an entire village would celebrate a wedding or mourn a funeral.

Still fuming, Merzagul dragged his father's scimitar out onto the road in front of his stolen compound and, in the presence of the entire village, renounced life, love, fatherhood, war, violence, blood, vegetarianism, and, finally, Islam itself, before proceeding to hurl his father's sword into the sky, with the honest intent of murdering Allah (praised is He) Himself.

Then he went back inside to collect his goats.

But by the will of Allah (praised is He), the sword was impeded in its path by an angel.

Twenty-five thousand nine hundred fifty-eight meters above the spot where Merzagul hurled his father's legendary sword, Second Lieutenant Billy Casteel was flying a McDonnell Douglas F/A-18 twin-engine, supersonic, all-weather, carrier-capable, multirole combat jet, affectionately dubbed "the Silver Angel." Casteel had just completed his twentieth bombing mission of the year by successfully obliterating forty-six insurgents, twenty-eight of their young wives, one hundred fifty-six of their children, forty-eight of their sisters, seventy-three of their younger brothers, nineteen of their mothers, ten of their fathers, twenty-two of their chickens, eight of their cows, three of their bulls, an orchard of their trees, and three thousand honeybees, whose death, it was hypothesized, would eventually lead to the extinction of the human race. The lieutenant was flying back to Home Base, where his closest allies, a small clan of white boys affectionately referred to as "the Rat Pack" (there was Clinton the Marine and Roger the Navy SEAL and…), were waiting to surprise Casteel with a carrot cake and a keg of beer in honor of his twentieth-bombing milestone. But as he flew in the sky with the sword of Merzagul's father hurtling toward him, Second Lieutenant Billy Casteel did not feel much like celebrating.

Minutes earlier, as he circled above his targets, Second Lieutenant Billy Casteel made the mistake of peering down and glancing upon a herd of baby goats led by two tiny...