by Mike Brogan
So if I don’t do what they want, they will kill my husband and daughter, and then me.
And if I do what they want – they will kill many thousands of innocent people. And then me.
EIGHT
Donovan felt his phone vibrate. He checked Caller ID and answered.
“Any breaks?” Maccabee asked.
“Not yet. Still pursuing the white van.”
“Any chance we can still fly to St. Thomas this weekend?”
“Well, Mac, . . . I . . . ah . . .”
“It’s okay, Donovan, if we postpone. I understand.”
She meant it . . . which made him feel even worse. His job had already postponed the trip twice. And this assignment would probably postpone it again. They’d dreamed of lying on the beach, sipping Mai Tais, making sand castles with seven-year-old Tish, and watching the sun melt into the Caribbean. Tish was his beautiful daughter from his deceased wife, Emma.
But since losing Emma, his prayers had miraculously been answered. He and Maccabee had fallen in love with each other. Then Maccabee and Tish had fallen in love. They’d become mother and daughter in every way, bonding naturally and deeply. He kept reminding himself, every day, that he was the luckiest man on the planet.
“Postponing again is not okay with me, Mac. We’ve postponed too damn many things.”
“Yes, but . . .”
“Back when Director Madigan and the President named me a special advisor, I thought I’d be advising. Turns out, my advising turns into fixing!”
“Which wasn’t part of your original job description.”
“Nope.”
“So what’s the answer?”
He paused. “I’m still working on that.”
“We can reschedule St. Thomas, Donovan. No big deal.”
“It’ll be a big deal for Tish. She’s been so excited about going. She’ll cry if she can’t make sandcastles.”
“True, but she’ll learn one of life’s important lessons!”
“Which one?” he asked.
“Life isn’t fair.” She paused. “We all have to learn that lesson.”
He heard something personal creep into Maccabee’s voice. Or was it fear?
“What’s going on, Mac?”
“Doctor Dubin called. My test came back.”
He didn’t want to hear this.
”I have . . . endometriosis.”
He seemed to recall it. “What’s endomet - ?
“ - the lining of the womb is not right. It explains why I’ve been feeling cramps and pain around my period.”
“Can you take something for the pain?”
“Anti-inflammatories. Ibuprofen, aspirin. But there’s one other complication. Endometriosis makes it more difficult to get pregnant.”
The news hit him hard. Her even harder, he knew. She wanted their child more than anything. They wanted their child more than anything.
“But . . . you can still get pregnant, right?”
She paused. “He thinks so, because my case appears to be mild.”
“That’s good.”
“Yes, it is. Listen, Jane’s calling in. We’ll talk later.”
“Okay . . .”
They hung up.
Donovan stared at the phone. Maccabee had been worried that her biological clock was ticking. Now, something called endometriosis might have stopped her biological clock.
NINE
Nell ran from the cabin – from the three men chasing her! Her lungs begged for rest, but resting meant death. She forced herself to run faster through the dense, hilly forest.
But the men gained.
Ahead, she saw a wall of huge boulders with a narrow opening. She squeezed through the opening and yanked a leafy branch over it. Then she moved back a few feet and leaned against the cold stone wall. She was in a small, pitch-black cavern. Her pulse pounded in her ears.
The men ran up and stopped a few feet from the opening.
She buried her mouth in her arm to hush her breathing.
The men whispered in Arabic. One man stepped close to the opening. She recognized his black shoes. Bull-Neck’s shoes. He bent down, fingered the soft ground.
Does he see my footprint? Does he know I’m in here?
She pressed back hard against the wall.
He leaned in, squinted into the dark cavern, his gun glinting in the moonlight. He was too large to squeeze through the opening, but the small thin man could.
The thin man walked close, bent down and aimed a flashlight into the cavern. It lit up the wall opposite her. Then the light crept toward her, very slowly.
She froze, afraid to move or breathe.
The light stopped inches from her shoe.
Suddenly, lightning exploded across the night sky, heavy rain started falling.
The men mumbled something, stood, and took off running down the path.
She breathed a long sigh of relief. Tension eased from her muscles. She closed her eyes and began to relax. They were gone. She was safe.
She felt warm air.
Behind her.
Warm, moist, foul air . . . breath on the back of her neck.
She turned and stared at the four-inch incisors of a black bear.
Nell bolted awake in the cabin, drenched with cold sweat, trembling. Just a bad dream, she told herself . . . just a nightmare.
But now, she knew, my real nightmare continues.
TEN
Nell looked out the cabin window at the pine trees she’d seen last night. A pink sliver of dawn slid between the branches and warmed her face. She heard birds singing.
She also heard her abductors talking in the nearby kitchen. The bull-necked man called the short leader “Hasham.” And Hasham called Bull-Neck “Aarif.”
They spoke what sounded like Arabic. Hasham would say something and Aarif would answer with na’am or laa, which seemed to mean yes or no.
She started to get out of bed, but her arm yanked to a stop. They’d handcuffed her to the bed rail. The handcuff rattle froze their conversation. They walked into her room and stared at her.
“The Ambien gave you a pleasant sleep,” Hasham said.
“It gave me a nightmare!”
“Still you rested, and I need your brain well rested.” He unlocked her handcuff.
She rubbed her wrist, then checked the bandage around her forearm incision where they removed her microchip implant. The bandage was clean and her arm seemed fine. But she wondered about infection.
“We’ve got coffee and Egg McMuffins in the kitchen,” Hasham said.
They walked her into the small rustic kitchen and she poured herself a coffee. She sipped some. It tasted like tar. She bit into a cold Egg McMuffin. Maybe a day old.
The big man, Aarif, stared at her. Everything about him frightened her. His small black eyes and missing left ear creeped her out. No wonder he was in her nightmare. He looked at her like she was last week’s garbage.
And she saw something else in his eyes – he, Aarif, would be the one who made sure she did not leave this cabin alive when her work was done. Some eyes can’t hide evil intentions.
Hasham sipped coffee and read DABIO, an ISIS propaganda magazine she’d seen before. The cover showed machete-wielding jihadists praising Allah by beheading two kneeling orange-suited prisoners. She wondered how people’s thinking got so warped and perverted? And whether she would soon join the beheaded?
“Time to work!” Hasham said.
He and Aarif walked her to the eight-foot floor section and they descended to the underground laboratory.
In the lab Hasham ushered her to the Hazmat suit-dressing chamber and pointed for her to put on a biohazard suit. She was relieved to see the suit was a new, fully encapsulated Tychem TK Deluxe. The Tychem would give her excellent, Level-A protection against biological and chemical agents up to Biohazard Level 4.
“Suit up. It’s your size.”
She started checking the suit for tiny holes or slits.
“The suit is
safe. I checked it,” he said.
“I always check my suits.”
“You think I brought you here to poison you?”
“No, but my colleague missed a suit hole and died from Marburg days later.”
Hasham shrugged. “Go ahead. Check it.”
She did and found no holes or slits. She put it on. Hasham wore an identical suit.
He unlocked the airtight pressure door with a loud whoosh. He then led her into the bio-lab and over to rows of large round stainless steel canisters stored on racks. He turned a canister around and pointed to its label.
She read it and her blood stopped. Her worst fears were now confirmed.
“I see you recognize this product,” Hasham said.
She nodded and feared the coming disaster.
“You’ve worked with it and its antidotes on several occasions.”
He knew she had, so she nodded.
As Hasham showed her several more rows of the same gleaming canisters, she realized she had to get him talking so he’d reveal more details about his attack.
“You have so much. Where’d you get - ?”
“Allah provides for the righteous.”
“With help from Iran?”
“Maybe. Or maybe from North Korea. Or Russia. Remember when Russia closed up its biological and chemical weapons factories and stopped paying the workers? Imagine Russians workers without vodka money! A crime against humanity! So we did the brotherly love thing. We kept their vodka flowing.”
She said nothing.
“These weapons are also available right here in America, Doctor! Money buys information.”
“Like what I do at Aberdeen?”
“Like that.”
She couldn’t think of a single colleague who would betray her. But an angry or fired employee might sell information. Or be coerced to, or be so pathologically deranged he would gladly slaughter a few thousand Americans for money or revenge.
Somehow, she had to stall Hasham, find a way to sabotage the weapon. Which meant she had to discover what his delivery system was. Which meant she had to work with him. Play along. Keep him talking.
“But how’d you get so many containers into the country?”
Hasham laughed. “Open your eyes, Doctor. America’s borders are Swiss cheese. Lots of holes . . . like your 5,500 mile US-Canadian border. Some rural border crossings only have sensors.”
“But those sensors work!”
“Not if we disable them. And your Mexican border is a joke. Forty tons of marijuana moved through just one tunnel last week! There are even underground railways.”
She knew about the tunnels and railways.
“And an even bigger joke is sea containers! Fifteen million shipping containers arrive here by sea each year? Guess how many are thoroughly inspected?”
She waited.
“Three percent! That means fourteen million shipping containers are not inspected closely!”
“Why not?”
He smiled. “Could it be because many major US shipping ports are owned, controlled, and operated by Saudi and United Arab Emirates companies? Did you know that?”
She didn’t and wondered if the containers she was looking at came thorough an Arab-controlled American port?
He led her over to another chamber and pointed to a rack stacked with smaller black steel canisters.
“You also know the product in these containers.”
“They have no labels. What is it?”
“Let’s call it medicine for Americans. You’re going to help us combine the two.”
“But why? You don’t even need this mystery product to kill people. As you know, your weapon will cause excruciating pain and death in a few minutes.”
“Quite true.”
“So why the second mystery product? Dead is dead.”
“All in good time, Doctor. All in good time.”
Why was he not revealing the mystery product? Because it would suggest the weapon delivery system? Somehow she had to identify the mystery product. Knowing that might help her find a way to sabotage his attack.
“Oh by the way,” Hasham said, “your precious little daughter, Mia, is just fine. My men are taking her into protective custody as we speak. I’ll show you photos soon.”
Nell stopped breathing.
ELEVEN
BEL AIR NORTH, MARYLAND
Amir Kareem focused his camera on the five-year-old blonde girl, Mia, playing in front of her grandmother’s house with a younger neighbor boy.
Kareem sat in the driver’s seat of a Maryland Gas and Electric van fifty yards down the street, skyping the video to Hasham Habib in the forest cabin.
“Where’s the grandmother?” Hasham asked.
“Inside. But she keeps coming to the front door and checking on her granddaughter every few minutes.”
“Where’s the neighbor boy’s mother?”
“A few feet away in her flower garden.”
“When the boy goes home, grab the girl.”
“Might be a while. No, wait - !”
“What?” Hasham said.
“The grandmother is taking the girl inside. The boy is walking back to his mother.”
“Is Fadoul ready?”
“Yes.”
“You’re both wearing your MG&E uniforms?”
“Yes.”
“Go now! Take the girl.”
“What if the grandmother causes trouble?”
“Collateral damage.”
TWELVE
After a few hours of restless sleep in the FBI lounges, Donovan, Drew Manning, Lindee, and Jacob met early the next morning in a conference room. Strong coffee and warm bagels welcomed them.
Donovan thought Lindee looked a little better this morning and hoped she’d remember something about Nell’s abduction, something that might give them a solid lead.
“Lindee, you watched the two men force your sister into a white van.”
She nodded.
“Can you try to visualize the van as it drove away?”
“Sure.” She closed her eyes.
“Do you see the back of the van?”
“Yes . . .”
“Do you see the van’s name?”
“No.”
“What do you see?”
“The sun reflecting off the back window and something just above the left rear bumper. Something shiny and gold. It gleams in the sun.”
“Gold letters?”
“No.”
“Numbers?”
“No.”
“A gold shape?”
“Yes.”
“Shaped like what?”
She paused, blinked. “I don’t know . . . shaped maybe like a . . . bowtie.”
“A gold bowtie?”
“Yes.”
Donovan had a thought. He sketched Chevrolet’s somewhat bowtie-shaped logo and showed it to her.
“That’s it!”
“Great, Lindee. Now, you said the last number on the license plate was a nine.”
“Yes.”
“As the van drives away, can you see the next number?”
Lindee closed her eyes. “Not well. It’s curved at top . . . maybe an eight.”
“Maybe we can find out later. You up for a short drive?”
She nodded.
THIRTEEN
“There!” Lindee said, pointing out the windshield. Donovan didn’t see what she was pointing at. “Where?”
“LEATHER TRENDS. The store Nell was looking into when the men took her . . . ”
“Let’s go inside,” Donovan said, parking in a No-Parking zone and hanging his Government Permit on the mirror.
Earlier, when he’d suggested visiting the abduction scene, Lindee agreed. But now he worried the visit might trigger a painful flashback for her.
He learned that last year a man broke into Lindee’s apartment, robbed her, beat her senseless and left her for dead. Nell found her and rushed her to the hospital where she was resuscitated twice. Back hom
e, Lindee began a slow recovery and was still healing.
But Lindee was their best hope for some clue that led to Dr. Northam’s abductors . . . and preventing what Donovan’s gut now told him was an imminent attack on America. And based on Dr. Northam’s specific expertise . . . it would be an attack with a weapon of mass destruction. Why else would they abduct her?
The question was – how imminent was the attack?
They walked over to LEATHER TRENDS. Lindee stared at a spot in front of the store, then back at the street. She looked frightened as she pointed at the curb.
“That’s where they pushed her into the van.”
Donovan looked at the traffic. Horns honked. Airbrakes squealed. Trucks and cars roared away from the light. So much noise and activity, Nell could have been snatched without anyone noticing.
“Did the police interview all these shopkeepers?” Lindee asked.
“Yes. No one saw Nell get dragged into the van.”
Donovan heard a car door shut behind him. He turned and saw two middle-aged men take suitcases from a SUV. They walked up to the LEATHER TRENDS door.
“Those might be the store owners. They were traveling yesterday,” Donovan said. “Maybe their security camera saw something.”
Lindee nodded.
“Excuse me, do you have a moment?” Donovan said.
“Sure,” the taller man in his forties said, “Come on in. If you see something you like, just let me know.”
“Actually, this is government business.” Donovan flashed his CIA badge.
The man grew serious fast.
“Does your security camera face your display window and this sidewalk?”
“It shows the window and part of the sidewalk and curb. By the way, I’m Ted, and this is Randall, my partner.”
“Nice to meet you both. This is Lindee Lindstrom. Her sister was abducted by two men as she looked in your store window.”
“Good Lord!” Ted said.
Both men froze.
“We’re so sorry,” Randall said, adjusting horn-rimmed glasses.
“Police talked to your employee, Jennifer,” Donovan said. “Jennifer said she saw someone fitting Nell’s description looking in the window. But when your store phone rang, Jennifer turned around and answered it. When she turned back, Nell was gone. That’s all Jennifer saw. She tried to get your security camera working for our agent, but it wouldn’t work.”
