“Do you want this operation to succeed, or don’t you?”
“Yes, of course. But—”
“No buts. You’re in a position to be our best set of ears in this operation. Xavier’s an easy mark. He’s being taught to understand that a reward of seventy-two virgins awaits him in the afterlife. Whet his appetite. Be his virgin in this world.”
“That’s not who I am, Abdul. I am not a prostitute.”
“And you’re definitely no virgin,” he said. “But I play the cards I’m dealt.”
A flash of light assaulted her eyes, as a sudden glow from the parking lot outside the motel lit up the night.
LeJeune Road was already alight with permanent streetlamps, but law enforcement had brought in portable trees of vapor lights to bring virtual daylight to the immediate area around the motel. Maritza was in the darkness, but the people on the other side of the street, closer to the motel, were within the outer reaches of the portable glow, bathed in white light.
Rusul’s memories burned hotter than vapor lights. Five months into the operation, Carter had finally spoken to her directly to ask what the hell was going on between her and Xavier. She’d confessed that one thing had led to another, and that she’d “developed feelings for Xavier.” Carter had gone ballistic and said she was out of line, and when she’d told him that it was Abdul who’d ordered her to cross the line in the first place, her accusation rang hollow.
Across the street, MDPD officers were moving the crowd back, beyond the reach of the vapor lights. Rusul watched, and then she froze, her gaze locking onto the man with the dark beard wearing a baseball cap. It was him.
It was Abdul.
She backed away from the barricade. She had to get to the other side of the street. This would be the night—the night she made it clear to Carter that it was a mistake to trust Abdul more than her.
Chapter 58
Andie waited for the phone to stop ringing, hoping to hear Amir’s voice on the line.
She was inside the mobile command center, just a few feet from Carter. It was tight quarters. Carter, as lead negotiator, was seated behind a small table. On it was his coffee mug, a bone mic to communicate with his team leaders in the field, and a telephone within easy reach to speak to the hostage taker. Nearest to him was the secondary negotiator, and next to him, a staff psychologist to evaluate the subject’s responses and recommend negotiating strategies. Schwartz was seated next to Andie, facing the team.
“Hello, this is Amir, I’m sorry I can’t take your call . . .”
Carter hung up.
“Try Molly’s phone,” said Andie. “Amir probably has all of them.”
Carter didn’t seem to appreciate the advice. “Tried that already, as you might have guessed. Let’s give him a few minutes.”
He put down his headset and breathed in and out.
Andie needed to know more about his approach. His earlier expressed willingness to sacrifice hostages if it would stop the next terrorist attack was weighing on her mind.
“Are you planning to ask Amir about the fingerprint on the gun?” she asked.
“That’s not your territory, Henning.”
“That’s my husband in there. I’m not interfering, but I think I have a right to know if the priority is to gather information or to save the hostages.” She was speaking more to her ASAC than to Carter.
“The priority is always to save the hostages,” said Carter.
“I told you I spoke with Maritza,” said Andie. “She said the fingerprint belongs to a known and confirmed member of al-Qaeda.”
Carter was stone-faced.
“That’s true, isn’t it?” asked Andie, again speaking more to Schwartz.
Carter didn’t answer, but she’d apparently gotten through to her ASAC.
“Tell her,” said Schwartz.
Carter grumbled, but Schwartz called the shots in this group. “We ran the fingerprint through the dead terrorist data bank. It came up.”
“Who?”
“The name wouldn’t mean anything to you,” said Carter. “He’s dead. Been dead for years.”
“You’re saying that fingerprint does not belong to the Riverside shooter?”
“Only if he rose from the dead,” said Carter.
“I’m still not okay with this,” she said.
“Not okay with what?”
“You have physical evidence that confirmed a connection between Amir and a known, albeit dead, member of al-Qaeda. And yet you used my husband. You pressured him to get his client to name his accomplice, but you never told him how dangerous this family really was.”
“I’m not hearing a problem,” said Carter.
“You should have told Jack.”
“How do you know I didn’t?”
Schwartz leaned forward in his chair, as if to draw the line. “Let’s not lie to her, Carter. We didn’t tell Jack.”
Andie tried to control her anger. “And look where we are now.”
“It was your husband who chose to defend Xavier Khoury,” said Carter. “Not me.”
The phone rang. Carter quickly put on his headset and gave everyone the quiet signal. Then he answered.
“So good of you to call back, Amir.”
“I want to speak to Swyteck’s wife.”
Andie was silent. Carter did not so much as glance in her direction.
“I’m afraid that’s not possible, Amir. She’s not here.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Let’s you and I talk, all right?”
“No, not all right. I think she’s sitting right there with you, but she’s afraid to talk.”
Carter did what a good negotiator was supposed to do, keeping it friendly, no argument.
“Ah, come on, Amir. I’m not lying to you. I promise you, I won’t lie to you as long as we keep talking.”
“You are so full of shit. I know she’s afraid. I read the newspaper article about the lawsuit against her. She ran like a coward. A trained FBI agent ran away from a boy with a pistol, when all she had to do was listen and wait for him to reload—and then overpower him. Her daughter is home safe. The children who followed her the wrong way down the hall, thinking she was leading them to safety, are all dead.”
The command center was silent. Not even Carter had a response.
“Nice work, Agent Henning. Now pick up the phone and call me.” Amir hung up.
Andie was staring at the floor, stunned.
Schwartz spoke first. “Ignore him, Andie.”
Andie took a breath, then looked her ASAC in the eye. “No. I can’t ignore him. I want to make the call.”
“Not gonna happen,” said Carter.
Andie’s gaze remained fixed on her ASAC. “I’m asking you, Guy. I want to call him.”
Jack wanted to hit him.
He had no idea why Amir wanted to talk to Andie, but he hoped she wouldn’t take the bait. He applied the same rule to himself, not taking the bait. The last thing he wanted to discuss with a terrorist was his own family. He turned the conversation back to Amir’s.
“Still pinning this on Xavier, are you?”
Jack was doing the loop at the front of the room by himself, walking from one wall to the other, running sniper interference for Amir. Molly was in the bathroom.
“What are you talking about?”
“You said Andie ‘ran away from a boy with a pistol.’ I assume you meant your boy.”
“Her boy,” said Amir, pointing with a jerk of his head toward the bathroom. And then a look of concern came over him. Molly had been in there an awfully long time.
“Molly, time to get out!” said Amir.
She didn’t answer. The thought crossed Jack’s mind that she might hurt herself.
Amir went to the door and pounded twice. “Molly!”
“Just a minute, all right?”
Jack was relieved to hear her voice.
The toilet flushed. The bathroom door opened. Molly stepped out tentatively, started across
the room, and then stopped.
“I can’t walk anymore,” she said.
“Didn’t you see American Sniper?” said Amir. “These guys will shoot through a pinhole if they think there’s an opening. Keep walking.”
She dragged herself back to the path she and Jack had cut in the carpet. To the far wall, turn. Back to the other wall, turn. Molly was over it.
“I have to sit down, Amir.”
“You just spent ten minutes in the bathroom.”
“I have cramps, okay?”
“Fine. Take turns. Sit with your back to the wall.”
She walked very slowly, her feet shuffling as she passed Jack. Then she whispered to him, “You can hear everything in the bathroom.”
Jack kept walking. Molly continued toward the wall and sat with her back to it. Amir apparently hadn’t heard what she’d said, and Jack didn’t fully understand the point. He continued to the far wall, turned, and started back toward Molly. She cut her eyes, telling him to go. It was his deduction that she had something to say to Amir. Or no—she wanted him to say something to her, and her strategy was that he wasn’t likely to say it with Jack in the room.
“I need to use the bathroom,” said Jack.
“You got cramps, too?”
“It’s been a few hours.”
“Go.”
Jack walked to the bathroom at the back of the room and closed the door behind him.
“Molly, you have to walk while Swyteck’s in there.”
Jack heard Amir’s voice loud and clear. Molly was right. The walls were like paper. The FBI didn’t even need electronic listening devices.
“I’ll walk,” she said. “But there’s something I have to say to you.”
“I don’t want to hear it.”
“Oh, you’re going to hear it. Twenty years, Amir. I’ve had this inside me almost twenty years. You’re going to hear it. Whether you want to or not.”
Chapter 59
Amir took a seat in the armchair, the only stick of furniture that wasn’t piled up against the front door and window. He needed a negotiating strategy. He could release one of the hostages. In return for what?
Money? How much?
A plane? To where? Havana was just ninety miles south of Miami. Fidel Castro was dead, but Cuban airspace was still hostile to American interests. US fighter jets couldn’t follow him there, unless they wanted to take on Russian-made MiGs. The motel was just a few minutes away from Miami International Airport. This plan could work. But there was an alternative.
A plea. Ratting out . . . who?
He rose and crossed the room to the front barricade. He’d left an opening at the peephole. A sniper’s bullet could pierce the door, so there was some risk, but he needed to see what was going on outside. He leaned forward and got a quick fish-eye view of the parking lot. It was brighter than before, thanks to whatever portable lighting the cops had brought in. Obviously, they thought more light was to law enforcement’s benefit, but Amir liked it, too. Hard to pull off a sneak attack in virtual daylight. LeJeune Road was quiet. Plenty of flat-roofed buildings across the street for snipers to position themselves on. He counted the cars in the parking lot. Seven. No change since the start of the standoff.
“Are you going to tell them about Ziad?” asked Molly. She was on sniper-fire-intercept duty, walking.
Amir backed away from the door. “Don’t say that name.”
“Why? Are you afraid the FBI might be listening?”
The thought had crossed his mind. “Just don’t say that name.”
She stopped. “Ziad Jarrah, Ziad Jarrah, Ziad Jarrah.”
He grabbed her by the collar, raised his hand to slap her, and then stopped. What if the cops were listening? Beating a hostage and her screaming for help might bring SWAT crashing through the door and charging into the room. At the very least, it might encourage Swyteck to play hero.
“Don’t ever say that name again,” he said, glaring. He released his grip on her collar.
Molly resumed walking. “The FBI must know by now,” she said. “How you two met in Hamburg. How you two reconnected when he came to Florida for his flight training.”
“Molly, that’s enough.”
“It can’t possibly take them as long as it took me to figure all this out. Nineteen years. I probably still wouldn’t know, if it weren’t for Maritza.”
Amir froze. From the get-go, he’d suspected that girl was trouble.
“When did you realize you were cooked, Amir?”
She was talking way too much, and Amir was on to her. She was betting that the FBI was listening, and this was her negotiation: let me go, or I bury you. She was overlooking the fact that there was another option.
He opened a music app on his cell phone and played it at full volume. Then he grabbed Molly by the throat, shoved the gun under her chin, and whispered into her ear. “I could strangle you to death, and they wouldn’t hear it over the music, even if they are listening. I’m giving you a choice. Fly to Cuba with me. Or go out that door feetfirst on a gurney, and I can fly there with Swyteck. Like I said, I only need one hostage. It’s up to you. Keep your mouth shut, or pay the price.”
Her eyes bulged. Her fingers pried at his grip. He released her. She gasped for air. He gave her a moment to recover and then killed the music.
“Keep walking.”
She caught her breath, and then put one foot in front of the other.
Amir returned to the armchair, thinking. Molly was right. The FBI must have pieced it all together by now. He’d managed to put Hamburg, Ziad, and al-Qaeda behind him for twenty years and lead a respectable life. Then all of it had come back to haunt him, jeopardizing everything he’d built for himself. He’d thought he could pull it back together, even after the shooting. But Molly had asked the right question. “When did you know you were cooked?” For Amir, that realization had come through a deposition transcript, the moment he’d read the printed colloquy of Swyteck’s examination of the fingerprint expert. When the chief of the MDPD Forensic Bureau’s Latent Unit had testified that fingerprints could remain on a gun for ten, twenty, or even forty years. Right about then, the FBI could have stuck a fork in him.
It all went back to his final meeting with Ziad, almost twenty years earlier.
“Nice gun,” said Ziad, speaking in Arabic.
They were at the kitchen table in Ziad’s apartment in Lauderdale-by-the-Sea, just a few blocks away from the South Florida fitness center where Ziad was taking close-quarter-combat training from a master. Amir watched as Ziad disassembled Amir’s brand-new Glock 9 mm pistol and laid the pieces on the table. It took him even less time to put it all back together.
“Is that how we get the guns on the plane?” asked Amir, also speaking in Arabic. “Take them apart and then put them back together once on board?”
“That was the idea. But that’s changed. No guns.”
“How do you hijack a plane without a gun?”
“We use these.” Ziad opened the kitchen drawer and showed him.
“That’s not much of a knife,” said Amir.
“It’s a box cutter. We can get through airport security with these.”
“We need guns. What if the shit hits the fan when the plane lands?”
“The plane isn’t going to land.”
“What do mean it’s not going to land?”
Ziad’s expression turned very serious. “I’m flying it into the White House.”
“Whoa. What? I didn’t sign up for a suicide mission.”
“We need five, Amir. I don’t have time to find another replacement. Mohammed al-Qahtani never made it out of the Orlando airport. You agreed to step in when Immigration sent him back to Saudi Arabia.”
“I didn’t agree to a suicide mission. I’m no martyr.”
“Come on, Amir. There are seventy-two virgins waiting for you.”
It was an odd attempt at humor under the circumstances. He knew Ziad wasn’t in it for that. He had a girlfriend back in
Germany whom he called or emailed almost every day. He was close to his family in Lebanon. He would even go out for a beer every now and then. Amir detected a hint of apprehension in his friend’s voice, but he respected his choice.
“Looks like you’re in line for a hundred and forty-four virgins, Ziad. I’m out.”
Amir’s cell phone rang. He answered it immediately. “This better be Agent Henning.”
He had a strategy. If anyone inside the FBI would push for his plane to Cuba, it would be Swyteck’s wife. But the friendly voice on the line was Carter’s.
“Good news, Amir. She’s on her way. Ten minutes. Fifteen, tops.”
The bathroom door opened and Swyteck stepped into the room. Amir raised his pistol shoulder high and stopped him in his tracks, aiming straight at his chest. Then he spoke into the phone.
“You’re on the clock. If she doesn’t call me in ten minutes, tell her she’s lost the chance to say good-bye.”
Chapter 60
The mobile command center was silent. Amir’s warning had given the FBI plenty to ponder, but Andie was more focused on the separate audio feed from the motel room, which had captured the entire conversation between Amir and his wife, less the part drowned out by music.
“Ziad Jarrah,” she said, looking straight at Carter.
It wasn’t a question. There wasn’t an FBI agent over the age of thirty who didn’t know the name of the 9/11 hijacker who took over as pilot of United Flight 93. The fact that no one in the command center was talking about it told her that she was the only one outside the loop.
“You heard right,” said Carter. “It took us twenty years. But we finally made the connection.”
“How?”
Carter glanced at the ASAC, as if asking for permission not to tell. Permission was denied.
“Tell her,” said Schwartz.
“When United Airlines Flight Ninety-Three crashed into an open field in Pennsylvania, there wasn’t the complete incineration that occurred with the direct hits on the Twin Towers or the Pentagon. In fact, the passports of two of the Flight Ninety-Three hijackers were recovered in the debris.”
Andie wasn’t aware of that. “When you say recovered, you mean in good condition?”
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