by Mike Brogan
She staggered down the alley and leaned against a building to catch her breath. She sucked in delicious fresh air. Then she heard a car engine.
Behind her.
She spun around and saw a big black Lincoln drive into the alley, its lights blinding her.
FORTY SEVEN
“I saw her!” said Abu in the black Lincoln Continental. “By that red brick building.”
“Impossible! She’s locked in her room!” said Bashar, the driver.
“Not anymore!” Abu pointed to her broken window.
Bashar saw it, then sped down the alley.
* * *
As the Lincoln raced toward her, Nell ducked back into the narrow space between two buildings. She hid behind a garbage dumpster and waited.
The Lincoln stopped between the buildings, the space too narrow to drive down. The two men looked in her direction, but didn’t appear to see her. Maybe they thought she ran out the other end. She held her breath.
The Lincoln sped on down the alley.
She paused, then walked back to the alley and peeked to see if the car kept going. Mistake.
Blinding headlights raced toward her.
Nell ran down the alley and ducked into an even narrower passageway between two large buildings. The Lincoln sped past the passageway, careened around the corner, and raced back to head her off at the other end.
Sensing their plan, Nell ran back the into the alley, turned down the first side street, and sprinted like hell. One hundred yards farther, she ducked behind some hedges beside a house, lay down flat, and rubbed dirt on her face to hide the glare of sweat. And waited . . .
Moments later, the Lincoln screeched around the corner, then crept down the street toward her. As it drew closer, she recognized the driver and tall bearded passenger from the bottling plant.
The Lincoln stopped. The driver turned on an LED spotlight. The brilliant beam lit up the other side of the street, checking between houses, behind trees, beneath parked cars.
Then the beam crossed the street to her side.
The light crept toward her hedge, reflecting on the grass just five yards from her . . . then four . . . three. If she moved, they’d see her. The light froze two yards from her face.
Did they see her face? Were they aiming a gun at her now?
Five seconds, ten . . .
Why hasn’t the light moved?
Because they’re aiming at me.
Finally, the light inched past her hedge, past the house, past the house next door, and moved slowly down the street. When she no longer saw the Lincoln’s red tail lights, she finally breathed again.
Maybe they were waiting for her to reveal herself. If she stepped out now, the spotlight might light her up.
She waited two minutes, raised her head, and looked down the street. She saw no car headlights, no brake lights, heard no car engines. She crawled from the hedge, brushed some dirt off, and walked in the shadows toward the corner, looking for anyone who could help. The street was empty.
Warm blood skidded down her back. Her cuts were mostly small. But it felt like tiny slivers of glass might be stuck in some places. She brushed dirt from her clothes. In a store window, she saw her reflection: she was a Walking Dead escapee.
She moved along the darker side of the street, watching for the black Lincoln, and searching for an open store. A 7-Eleven, gas station, CVS, a bar, some place with a phone. Any place with a light on. Every store was dark.
Ahead, a pickup stacked with hay bales drove down a cross street before she could signal the driver.
She turned the corner and saw lights - a Mobil station. A hundred yards ahead.
She had to get there without being noticed.
Clinging to the shadows, she hurried down the street and over to the station. She stepped inside, heard the doorbell ring, and realized the store’s lights lit her up like an Oscar winner. She ducked behind a magazine rack.
The skinny young attendant’s thick dark eyebrows shot up when he saw her mud-smeared face and bloody blouse. He checked the door, obviously expecting her attacker to burst in.
His nametag said Mustafa.
“You are hurt, ma’am?” Strong foreign accent.
“Yes, a bit. Please hide me and call 911!”
“Hide you . . .?” He looked outside to see whether her attacker was there. Then he gestured for her to follow him quickly.
“Please to come!”
Should she trust a man named ‘Mustafa’ after what she’d been through? But he seemed genuinely concerned, helped her immediately, and hadn’t signaled anyone outside.
Or had he?
Mustafa led her into a back room and gave her some antiseptic cream, Band-Aids, and paper towels to clean herself at a sink.
“Thank you, very much.
“I call 911 now!” he said.
“Thank you.”
Mustafa tapped 911, explained her injuries, listened a bit, and hung up.
“Police will come. But they’re all at a truck-car accident out on Route 30. Said it take a while to get here.”
“May I use your phone?”
“Sure.” He handed it to her. “Sorry, not much power left.”
She couldn’t remember Lindee’s cell phone number. She dialed Jacob’s number and he answered on the first ring.
“Jacob, it’s - !”
“- NELL!” Jacob shouted, “Nell’s on the phone!”
She heard people cheering and clapping.
“Where are you?” he asked. The phone signal started cutting in and out.
She asked the station attendant and he told her.
She told Jacob who immediately put her through to a man named Donovan Rourke.
“Doctor Northam, thank God you’re free.”
“But two men in a Lincoln are chasing me.”
“Hide somewhere in the gas station. The FBI or the police will pick you up as soon as possible.”
“Okay.” The phone faded, came back a bit, flickered.
“Are your abductors attacking in the US?”
“Yes. . .”
The phone started cutting out. She looked at the power bars and saw the last one flickering.
“They’re using a - !”
“ - can’t hear you – Using what?”
The line died. The power bars emptied.
She called out to the attendant, “Do you have a land-line phone?”
“No. Just my cell. Charger’s at home. Sorry.”
“Do you have a computer with Internet access?”
“No. Just our company’s InTRAnet network. Not connected to the Internet.”
She tried the phone again. Dead.
That’s when she heard the explosion – coming from the direction of the bottling plant. She and Mustafa ran to the window and looked outside.
Massive plumes of purple-red fire and smoke soared into the night sky above the plant. The fire and the explosion had destroyed the plant.
Tires squealed into the gas station. She turned and saw the black Lincoln skid to a stop near the door.
Did they see me?
FORTY EIGHT
“Those two men are chasing me!” Nell ducked behind a shelf. “Please to come! Better hide place.” Mustafa said.
He hurried her back to an area with shelves, file cabinets and large cardboard boxes in the corner. He lifted the boxes to the side and pointed down to a cabinet with a half door that came up to her waist.
“Please to get inside. I push boxes in front.”
The station doorbell DINGED.
“They come inside! Please to hurry!”
She bent down and crawled into the small space crammed with plumbing pipes, electrical wires, dust, and cobwebs. Something crawled into her hair and wriggled its way down to her scalp. She slapped it and the crawling seemed to stop.
She heard Mustafa slide the large cardboard boxes in front of her half-door, then hurry to the front of the station, where it sounded like the men were walking around, obviousl
y looking for her.
“Did a tall woman, brown hair, thirty-five come in here?” Loud, thick accent.
“No woman.”
“What is this?” another male voice.
“What?” Mustapha said.
“On floor!”
“Is wet blood!” the other man said. “Is more blood there.”
“Oh that - I cut my arm with box opener,” Mustafa said.
“You have no bandage.”
“More fresh blood here! Where woman with bloody shirt?”
“What woman?”
“Show us back room now!”
“But sir -!”
She heard footsteps come toward her.
“Sir - customers not allowed in back!”
“Show me woman!”
She heard scuffling, someone throwing a punch. Mustafa moaned. Then the men walked back to the storage room next to her area and started opening cabinets and closets.
“Look – more fresh blood! Where woman?” The men spoke in rapid Arabic.
Mustafa said nothing.
“Ayn hy?” Where is she?”
“Ayn hy?”
She heard someone throw a punch. Then a groan. It sounded like Mustapha fell down.
“Tell us now!”
She heard what sounded like the metallic click of a gun.
“Okay okay! Stop! Don’t shoot!” Mustapha said. “I tell you! She crazy lady! Come in here all bleeding. I don’t know why? She’s all bloody. Dirty on face! Dirty on cloths. Crazy woman! You drive in, she run away! Run out that back door!”
“Why no blood near back door?”
“She run crazy fast!”
The men said nothing for several seconds.
“Blood near this room with big boxes. We search in here now!”
“No. Just boxes!” Mustapha said. “She run out!”
Nell heard them step into her room. They began moving boxes. They would find her half-door and then her . . . in seconds . . .
Then she heard something.
Overhead.
Thump thump thump - the rhythmic clip of a helicopter. And then, she heard distant sirens getting louder. Fire engines for the warehouse fire? Police cars for her?
The two men mumbled in Arabic, then appeared to run back to the station entrance. The doorbell DINGED. Seconds later, she heard tires squeal out of the station.
She exhaled as the chopper and sirens grew louder.
Mustafa hurried back to her hiding place.
“Okay now. Men drive away.” He pushed aside the boxes.
She opened the small door and Mustafa helped her out of the cramped space.
“Thank you, Mustafa. You saved my life.” She wiped blood off his lips where they’d hit him.
He nodded and pulled a dead long-legged spider from her hair.
Three FBI-jacketed agents and a police officer ran into the storage room.
“What happened here?” a tall agent said.
“Two men were trying to kill me,” Nell said.
“Where are they?”
“In a big black Lincoln that raced out of the station thirty seconds ago.”
“Lincoln on security video. I show you,” Mustafa said, pointing to the monitor.
The FBI agent nodded and turned to her. “Are you Doctor Nell Northam?”
She nodded as tears filled her eyes.
FORTY NINE
MAYFIELD
Hasham’s rage burned like molten lava. He squeezed his hands into tight angry fists.
He hated incompetence, especially from his people. Like the two bumbling morons in front of him: Abu and Bashar. They’d just confessed to colossal incompetence – they’d allowed an unarmed woman, Nell Northam, to escape from a double-locked room in the bottling plant while it was on fire. How could this happen?
He hurled his cup of tea against the wall of the rental house. The cup shattered and plastered the wall with black tea leaves.
Abu and Bashar cowered in their chairs.
“Her steel door was bolted shut! Who left the door unlocked?”
“She broke the window and crawled out!” Abu said.
“Liar! It was too small! If you don’t find her, you know what our leaders will demand of you?”
They said nothing.
“Your worthless lives! Find her!” Hasham threw his pen at them.
Abu and Bashar ducked and raced from the room.
Fighting to control his rage, Hasham grabbed his gold hookah pipe. He puffed hard, filling his lungs with the rich, soothing hashish. Within seconds, the cannabis calmed him, and he reminded himself that he still controlled everything.
Nell Northam’s escape changed nothing. She could not possibly stop his attack. For a simple reason. She did not know how he would attack with the VX . . . because she’d been locked in the janitor’s room and had no chance to see how.
Bottom line: the authorities could not stop his attack.
Even if they employed all the predictable protective measures against a VX attack – they would not save one life. Because the only protective measures they knew – were useless against his ingenious delivery system. They wouldn’t see it coming, so to speak. And when it got there, it would be too late. Game over, as the Americans say.
Should he tell Bassam Maahdi in Yemen about Dr. Northam’s escape? Absolutely not. Bassam always overreacted at the slightest setback. He might even cancel the attack. He’d canceled them before.
Not this time, Bassam. This time I will attack even if you cancel. This is my attack.
Of course, if you cancel, and I go ahead and attack, you’ll order an assassin to terminate me. But . . . maybe before you give that order, you yourself might just expire.
Short, fat Bassam Maahdi was morbidly obese. Thanks to gobbling down kilos of cholesterol-rich lamb stew and baba ganoush each day . . . and getting less exercise than a boulder – the perfect lifestyle for a fatal heart attack.
Hasham knew a Yemeni cardiologist who’d be delighted to arrange a fatal lamb-stew-baba-ganoush heart attack.
FIFTY
Donovan counted the seconds until Dr. Nell Northam arrived at the command center in the Holiday Inn a few miles from Mayfield. Donovan, Manning, Jacob and Lindee sat around a large conference table, waiting . . .
At least Dr. Nell Northam was in safe hands, he knew.
Maccabee, his wife, was not, he feared.
Donovan still couldn’t reach her and she still hadn’t called him. And he hadn’t learned whether she’d escaped their apartment before the fake air conditioning man got to her. Agents were looking for her and the fake AC guy without success. Donovan had left her several call-me-now messages. But no response. She was not in the apartment. She was not in the building. She must have been abducted, or worse. He was sick with worry.
Manning turned to Donovan. “Police just found the two men who chased Dr. Northam to the Mobil station.”
“They talking?”
“Nope. Both committed suicide in their Lincoln.”
Donovan shook his head in frustration. “Search their phone records, contacts, homes, friends.”
“We are.”
“These suicides prove the magnitude of this attack!” Manning said.
Donovan nodded and grabbed his ringing phone.
“Rourke . . .”
“Hi,” Maccabee said.
Donovan almost dropped his phone. His body seemed to melt.
“Guess you’ve tried to phone me,” Maccabee said.
“Jesus, Mac! I’ve been calling and calling but – ”
“ - I couldn’t call you. Your warning spooked me so much, I ran from our apartment without my phone.”
“Oh . . .”
“When Mrs. Hansen on Three wasn’t home, I grabbed a taxi to Jane’s. But Jane wasn’t home either. So I walked around looking for a public phone booth. Guess what? There are none! I’m at Jane’s now, using her phone.”
“Stay there. I’m sending agents to pick you up now and take you to my off
ice. Tish is already there. My assistant Mamie is watching her. You’ll both be safe there.”
“You had Tish picked up early?”
“Had to. Didn’t know where you were.”
“I understand.”
“Let’s talk later.”
They hung up.
Donovan exhaled like a punctured tire. Maccabee was safe. Mia was safe.
But thousands of people were about to die.
“Everything okay at home?” asked Denny Cage, a Homeland Security agent sitting beside him.
“It is now, Denny.” Donovan had worked with Agent Cage, a Homeland Security Agent for years. The smart forty-year-old had thick blond hair and light blue eyes. Tinted glasses hung on a silver chain around his neck. Cigarette ashes dotted his scuffed Hush Puppies.
The door swung open again.
Donovan watched three agents escort Dr. Nell Northam into the conference room. Her bloodstained muddy blouse, bruised cheek, and slight limp told them what they already knew: it was a miracle she was alive.
Everyone applauded as Jacob ran over and hugged his wife. Then Lindee hugged her. Donovan felt like hugging her. She was their only hope for answers.
“Where’s Mia?” Nell asked Jacob, her eyes wide.
“With mom. She’s fine,” Jacob said. “A government plane is flying them up here a little later.”
Nell slumped back into Jacob’s arms, tears flowing.
“They’re attacking with a nerve agent,” Nell said, still clutching Jacob.
“Which one?” Agent Cage asked.
“VX!”
“Aw . . . Jesus!” Cage slumped back in his chair, looking defeated.
“Fully weaponized?” Donovan asked.
“Yes. But the VX is blended with another substance.”
“Which one?”
“I don’t know. They kept it secret.”
“Are they ready to attack?” Donovan asked.
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Anytime now. Within twenty-four hours.”
Donovan felt like he’d been tasered.
Silence filled the room.
“Where are they attacking?” Donovan asked.
“I tried to find out, but couldn’t. The leader, a man named Hasham Habib, refused to tell me. But he bragged that that his delivery system was unlike any VX delivery system ever used . . . unlike anything our experts would ever consider or anticipate.”
