He placed both hands around my middle again and I felt him adjust the alignment of our two very horny bodies so I was a little ahead of him. Then, with a gentleness that surprised me, he lifted me, tilted my frame a bit and slid me back toward him. As he slid in, I heard him utter his whispered gasp of pleasure. “Oh, God, Dee Dee!”
“Not bad from this side, either,” I answered, smiling even though he couldn’t see it.
Then, both hands gripping my middle, Jerod lifted me in a soft, gentle motion up and slid me down. I felt my vagina slide on up and down on his erection again and again. Whether he was uncertain or just being gentle, I don’t know, but he started tentatively, almost tenderly, and then slowly increased his pace. Up and down, up and down, his steady rhythm built and crescendoed as both our passions arcked higher. Even before it erupted, I could feel his orgasm coming in the tightening of his grasp around my middle, and then he pounded me against his flesh and held me fiercely in place. He came first, exploding inside me--I could tell from his anguished cry, deliberately muffled in my hair. Then, unlike any of the men I had known before--in the biblical sense, that is-he didn’t just quit once his need was satisfied. After a brief pause while he savored his own climax, his strong arms continued this relentless locomotion unchecked. Though spent, he still propelled his motion and I was released a minute later. I started to scream my delight and his hand came around to stifle my cry.
God, until that moment, I forgot how long it had been. I’m not sure whether it was my woozy head, my emotional state, the perilous conditions of our confinement or the strange, cramped position of our lovemaking, but I can say I have never FELT like that before. Overcome with this indescribable delight, I started to quiver slightly and weep. This time not from fear or cold, but from my own, newly unleashed passion. By then, some of the aches began to resurface, but I was too numb with pleasure to notice much. He kissed me this time and held me in his warm, perspiring arms. Exquisitely spent, I laid my head against his body and drifted off to sleep again.
I slept contentedly in his arms and I think he fell asleep as well. The world briefly forgotten, we were both blissfully peaceful in that awkward embrace and we slept for I don’t know how long.
Then, somewhere in that fog of slumber, we were jerked awake. A huge explosion roared outside and rocked the building, hammering both of us hard against the back wall.
Chapter 41
Yassim pulled the three sheets of paper from the fax tray, giving them a cursory examination. Realizing they were repeat copies, he handed one to each of the men with him. “Let us see what the Leader of the Free World has to say,” he said, chuckling. He read aloud, “Asad Akadi is a criminal, convicted of murder and espionage by a jury of his peers. His release, then, is no simple matter. If your demand is to be granted, much will need to be arranged.”
“Use the phone in the principal’s office and call me so we can talk, one on one. You can reach me directly at 202-310-1112. I have arranged for a secure line so we can speak in confidence. When we talk, I will discuss what is possible with Akadi.”--President Ryan Gregory.” He held up the sheet. “What do you think of your president’s words, Jose?”
“He’s not my president, Yassim,” Jose shook his head vigorously, making the disheveled black curls dance. “Hell, I didn’t even vote for him.”
“What do you think of his request to speak in confidence, Mustafa?” the cell leader asked.
“Yassim, I am but a poor soldier of Allah,” the terrorist responded. “I am not knowledgeable about such things. But our experience has taught us that we can never trust the word of an American president.”
“Did you see that?” Something outside drew Yassim’s gaze toward the front of the school.
“No. What was it?” Mustafa said.
Yassim studied the scene outside the window of the office, but could detect no change, no movement. He could have sworn his eyes had caught something. His stare remained fixed on the curved parking drive that swept past the front sidewalk of the school. The circular driveway was lined with the yellow school buses that formed a half circle around the single flagpole. Atop the flagpole hung the American flag, the wind whipping the colors viciously. He could find nothing out of place, but still he stared.
“What is it, leader?” asked Mustafa. “Does something concern you?”
“I am not sure.” Yassim did not take his eyes from the scene. “Hand me the binoculars.”
Mustafa pulled a set of binoculars from the knapsack and handed them to his leader. Yassim grabbed them and, raising them to his eyes, continued his examination of the scene in front of the school, sweeping the glasses slowly left to right.
“Yassim?” Mustafa asked, concern in his voice.
“It appears we have company.”
Mustafa cupped his massive hands around his eyes and peered out the window alongside his leader. Even Jose sauntered to the window, curious now, leaning his tall, rail frame forward against the pane. “I do not see anything, Yassim,” Mustafa said uncertainly and turned toward the leader.
Yassim took the glasses down from his eyes and handed them to Mustafa. “Look carefully behind the tires of the fifth bus in line and you will see one of them. These soldiers are good to have gotten this far without us spotting them.”
“Yes, now I see the one...and another behind the wheel of the next bus, and I see one more. How many do you think are there, leader?”
“It does not matter. You have the charges placed along the drive?”
“Yes, all along the approach, just as you said,” Mustafa said.
“Good. Now hand me the detonator,” Yassim held out his palm.
Mustafa removed the knapsack and pulled out a small silver box. His huge hand held it out to Yassim. “It is not turned on. You need only to flip the switch and then push the button.”
The cell leader held the electronic box in his left palm and, using the index finger of his right hand, he flipped the switch. No sound was emitted but a red light blinked in a slow, repetitive pattern as the box came alive. He glanced out the window again and then back to the silver device, where his finger rested on the green button. He closed his eyes and whispered, “This is for you, Fatima and Jamal.” His finger depressed the button.
For one second, nothing happened. Then the world rocked. As Yassim raised his eyes to look, the shock waves from the explosion struck the building, shattering the large office window. The three men dove to the floor as glass shards rained down on them. Just before he dropped down, Yassim saw the chassis of one of the buses hurled into the air by the explosion. For a full minute, the men lay on the gray carpet of the office, arms covering their heads, as they heard secondary explosions and fires erupt from the blast.
Convinced that the worst had passed, Yassim raised himself up and listened to the screams of men outside and the continued tinkling of cracking glass. Peering through the opening where the window had been, he could barely see through the smoke. Several fires roared where the yellow school buses had sat seconds earlier.
“Allah, be praised!” Yassim intoned.
“Allah, be praised,” Mustafa echoed, getting to his feet.
“Me too,” Jose added, struggling to pull himself up. With one powerful arm, Mustafa reached down and lifted the tall custodian as if he were weightless. Standing together, the three men stared out through the broken glass, transfixed at the scene of the carnage. Patches of grass around the flagpole were on fire, burning the green to ugly black cinders. The sidewalk and driveway wore great holes, as if some angry giant had ripped apart the concrete and asphalt and tossed it haphazardly around. Fragments of the bus chassis were strewn everywhere, the metal stretched and misshaped, the yellow paint charred. Among the ruins several bodies lay splayed on the ground, bloodied, and lifeless. The body closest to them, a boy of about eighteen, Yassim would have guessed, lay still. The body--although it would be hard to call it that after the explosion--was burned, blackened, with one arm and leg ripped off in the explos
ion. The body lay lifeless like some huge, desiccated doll in a garbage heap. Blood no longer pumped, but oozed slowly out from both ugly stumps, the two pools running together and staining the sun-bleached concrete bright crimson. Idly, Yassim looked around for the missing body parts, but could not see them.
Yassim studied the scene, looking for survivors that would have to be dealt with. No one moved. “Mustafa, go make a sweep to see if any survived. If you find any, kill them.”
Yassim returned his attention to the inside of the office, deciding what he should do about the fax. His glance strayed to a panel of lights above the fax machine and he noticed that one light was on. He peered more closely at the light and read aloud the small number typed below. “015?” He turned with a question to Jose. “Why is this light on? Where is it from?”
“I don’t know. Let me look.” Jose moved closer to the panel and studied it. “Oh, that is the call button from the coach’s office downstairs.”
“Downstairs? I remember no downstairs to this building. Was it in the drawings you brought for me?”
“Maybe not,” said the custodian. “You see, it’s not much of a basement floor. Just a couple of rooms the Boosters added after the building was built, some offices for the coaches along with visitors’ locker rooms.”
“I do not remember this light from before. Is anyone down there?”
“Naw, I saw the Coach Baumer up with the others in the cafeteria,” answered Jose.
“Then why is it on?” Yassim glared at the custodian.
Jose squirmed. “I don’t know. The buttons are really sensitive. Probably, Coach just bumped eet on his way out. Didn’t even know it.” Two beads of perspiration appeared on Jose’s forehead and slowly curled their way into his mustache.
“Did you search it?” Yassim barked.
“No-no-o,” stuttered Jose. “You had me check out the other end of the building, the northeast end. These two rooms,” Jose pointed to the lighted button and the next one, “are under the southeast section of the school.”
“How do you get to these rooms?”
“There is a door in the gym at the south end of this hallway,” Jose’s bony finger pointed to the hallway outside the office, “that opens to steps to the lower floor.”
Mustafa reappeared in the doorway. “They are all dead now, Yassim,” he reported. “Only one lived through the explosion and my bullet sent him to Allah. There were twelve soldiers, all well armed. I relieved them, and put the weapons inside the building.”
“Well done, my brother. Allah will reward you,” said Yassim. “But there is no time to lose. I have another task for you.” The cell leader turned to the custodian. “Jose, show Mustafa where these basement rooms are located,” he said, pointing to the light on the panel. “Mustafa, search every space down there and make sure we have not overlooked anyone. Jose, take him to the stairs and then return here. I may have further need of your services.”
“As you wish, leader.” Mustafa turned his large form toward the door to the office.
“Wait!” directed the cell leader. “Leave that here,” he said, pointing to the pack on the terrorist’s back. Mustafa eased the knapsack off his back and set it gently on the countertop.
Jose shuffled his tall form across the office and met the terrorist just outside the doorway. “Eets this way,” he said and both men headed down the hallway.
As Yassim listened to the echo of the footsteps decrease, he turned back to the fax. Hitting a key on the secretary’s computer, he watched the screen come to life, as if resurrected by his touch. He sat at the keyboard and paused. “Perhaps, President Gregory is ready to discuss the future now,” he said aloud.
Chapter 42
The building shuddered under the explosion, slamming my head against the wall of the closet. “What was that?”
“I believe our friends upstairs have just delivered a rude welcome to some visitors,” explained Jerod as he sat up. He reached around in the dark, searching for his clothes. His hand landed on something else.
“Jerod! What do you mean?”
His hands continued their search and found a shirt. He moved himself to a sitting position and slid it over his head in the dark. “From the explosion, I’d venture that Jesus and his comrades must’ve rigged some charges.”
“Do you think he’s killing the kids?”
“I don’t know, but I doubt it. Unless they moved them, the cafeteria is over there,” he said, pointing in one direction. “From here, it sounded like it came from the front of the school.” He pointed the other way. “I would suspect either someone tried to go out that way or, more likely, someone was tryin’ to come in.”
“Oh, God!”
“It’s going to be okay,” Jerod whispered. Then, in our private space, he kissed me and stood up, pants in hand. I lay, unmoving among the flattened sweat clothes that had been our bed and looked up at his handsome figure.
His head whipped around toward the crack between the two doors. “Someone’s comin’!” He jammed one leg into the sweatpants and indicated for me to be quiet. His second leg stepped into the other side and he pulled the drawstring. He opened the door and stepped quickly into the room, his gaze darting toward the door of the office. He grabbed at some of the sweatshirts, pulling them from under me and whispered, “Quick! Get under these!”
His words were so intense, they galvanized my fear again and I scrambled, trying to burrow frantically into the smelly workout clothes like some cowardly mouse.
“Good. Now stay there till I come get ya.”
Before I could object, he closed the closet door, returning me to relative blindness again. I strained to listen. I heard his bare feet scurrying across the linoleum and a door close. Suddenly, alone, without him, the cramped space became claustrophobic and I had the overwhelming urge to get out of that closet. Then I heard the voice.
“Like I said, there’s notheeng down here, but some coaches’ offices and a few locker rooms.”
I’d recognize that voice anywhere and a wave of relief swept over me. I exhaled the breath I had been holding and sat up. Suddenly, I was glad that our crazy janitor never lost his accent. I sat up, ready to call out to him. What I heard next stopped me.
“There two’s offices and two locker rooms down here,” Jose was saying. “You go ahead and look, Mustafa, but you ain’t going to find anyone. Sometime I hide out down here, when I wanna avoid work.” The custodian laughed at his own joke. “The only one ever down here this time of the day is Coach Baumer and I saw heem in cafeteria.”
“I will start with d’ locker rooms,” answered a second man with a thicker, Mideast accent.
The reality of Jose’s involvement hit me and my heart hammered in my chest. I collapsed back onto the sweats, trying to burrow into the pile again. I squirmed to the bottom, feeling the cold vinyl against my flesh.
“O-key,” Jose was saying, “I have to get back up to Yasseem.”
I heard two sets of footsteps, each heading off in different directions. Oh God, someone’s coming here. I knew it was just a matter of time and I panicked. I held my breath. Where the hell was Jerod? Breathe. Breathe.
Scooting down and flattening my breasts, I tried to bury myself deeper, knowing that if the searcher--what had Jose called him?--Mustafa?--bothered to check, it would do little good. I closed my eyes and held my breath again.
I heard the doors open and a harsh whisper. “Dee Dee?”
It took a moment for my brain to process and I didn’t respond at first. “Dee Dee?” he repeated more urgently this time.
I turned my head slightly so I could answer and the sweats fell away, exposing my face. “Yeah, I’m here,” I said, a squeak in my voice.
Kneeling down, he leaned his head close to the pile. “Listen, I’ve only got a second,” he whispered, his head jerking back toward the hallway. He stopped and I held my breath. We both heard it. The footsteps grew louder and then receded again. “I’ve only got a second. He’s searchin’ the sec
ond locker room now.” His head swiveled back toward the office door. “He’s going to be here in a few minutes.”
“Oh, Jerod!” I whimpered. “I’m terrified.”
“I know. I know,” Jerod said, but he didn’t look at me, his head still turned toward the door. “I’ve got an idea. May not be a great one, but it’s all I’ve got.”
“What is it?”
“No time. Here’s what I need ya to do,” he said, suddenly breathless. His eyes were back on me, fear in the pupils. “When he comes into this room, stay huddled in the closet. But I want you to make some very quiet sounds, whimpering or somethin’, got it?”
“What? What do you mean?” I protested.
“No time. Just do it!” he commanded in a whisper and shoved my head down, pulling sweat clothes back over my face.
Face down, I couldn’t see but I heard the closet door close and the soft patter of his bare feet. I began to pray. Dear God, don’t let me die. I’ll come back to church. I’ll call my mother every week. I’ll--
Then I heard the slap of shoes--boots, I remember thinking--and I started to cry, murmuring in loud sobs there on the floor of the closet.
Chapter 43
Rashid stared with unbelieving eyes, squinting to peer into the semidarkness of the room. There, just on the fringe of the dim light he saw the two figures, a woman and a girl. Not much more than their silhouettes were visible, but he could have sworn, just for an instant, that he was watching his own mother and sister huddled there in the darkness. He knew the idea was ludicrous; he was in America and they were thousands of miles away, in the desolate Afghan desert. But something in the way the woman bent over the younger figure, her hands gently resting on the girl’s shoulder, in the way the girl’s diminutive body shook as she cried--called up the image of his family and his heart ached.
Rashid couldn’t help it and was drawn to the pair. He hurried across the room to where they crouched. His abrupt appearance startled them both; the girl’s sobbing increased as she cowered in front of him. Up close, it was obvious the woman was, of course, a teacher--a science teacher, he thought-and he did not know the girl. She must have been a high school student, he reasoned, but she looked so small and helpless, it would have been easy to mistake her for ten, his sister’s age. The two figures stared back in fear, clearly disturbed by his sudden intrusion into their intimacy, their eyes swollen red with crying. Rashid found himself apologizing quietly, as he backed away.
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