Twenty
Page 32
“No!”
Amir’s worries about a sniper shot had steadily grown to paranoia. Even with the drapes pulled shut, he had both hostages walking from one side of the room to the other as human shields.
“Faster,” said Amir. “Both of you. Walk faster.”
“A sniper can’t see through the drapes,” said Molly.
“They have infrared sensors. They can pick up body heat.”
Jack had heard of such devices from Andie. They were different from night-vision goggles and actually allowed law enforcement to “see” through solid walls. Maybe Amir wasn’t just paranoid.
“I want to sit down,” said Molly.
“You can sit when they start taking me serious.”
“Seriously,” said Molly. “When they start taking you seriously.”
He aimed his pistol. “Keep it up, Molly, and you’ll be the one who gets the bullet when this deadline passes.”
“Nobody needs to die,” said Jack, which drew the pistol in his direction.
“Do I hear another volunteer?”
“What I meant is that you’re going to get your plane to Cuba,” said Jack.
“You’d better hope so. Because either way, the FBI gets one hostage. In ninety seconds we’ll know if they want him dead or alive.”
Jack glanced at the crossbeam on the bed frame. By his guesstimate, walking at this pace, he’d pass it five or six more times in the next ninety seconds. He was down to his final handful of opportunities.
No do-overs.
“Mix it up a little,” said Amir. “Confusion to the enemy. Don’t go all the way across the room from wall to wall. Meet in the middle and then turn back.”
Molly was on the side Jack wanted. His final handful of opportunities had just slipped through his fingers.
“Andie will get you what you want,” said Jack. “Just give her the time she needs.”
“I’ve given them more than enough time.”
“What do you think is going to happen when they hear a gun go off in this room? Shooting a hostage is like shooting yourself.”
“Not if the other one is still alive.”
“My God, Amir,” said Molly. “Who are you? You talk about killing human beings like we’re insects.”
“Zip it, Molly.”
“How could you—”
“I said, zip it!”
“How could you have anything to do with a school shooting?”
“I didn’t know, all right! They gave me a year—one year to figure out how to make amends for backing out of Flight Ninety-Three, how to make my own mark on the twentieth anniversary of nine-eleven. They never said school shooting! I never said it! Not until Xavier pussied out on blowing himself up in the mall did Abdul—”
Amir stopped. Jack watched as Molly stepped toward her husband, as if confronting the devil himself. “I’m not sure I even believe in hell, but if there is one, you’re going there.”
“Not today, I’m not.”
“Say hello to your friend Ziad Jarrah when you get there.”
“Shut up!”
“I’ll bet that whole virgin thing didn’t work out so well for him.”
Amir shoved her the way he’d surely shoved her many times before, knocking her into the barricade. She hit with so much force that the desk stacked on top of the dresser came tumbling down, taking the bed frame with it. The unbolted crossbeam shook loose and landed on the floor. Jack grabbed it and swung it like a baseball bat, hitting Amir squarely on the side of the head. As he staggered into the wall, a gunshot rang out—and then it was suddenly like the Fourth of July, with two quick and even louder explosions to follow the first.
Jack hit the floor. He heard Molly scream, but it was the least of the noises that suddenly filled the room—walls crashing, boots stomping, and men shouting.
“FBI! FBI! FBI!”
Sharp beams of light cut like lasers through smoke and dust. In the confusion, Jack saw Amir on his back, raising his pistol in answer to SWAT’s knocking. Jack had an answer of his own, swinging the crossbeam like an axe and bringing it down with all his strength.
It was impossible to discern what he heard next, whether it was the cracking of Amir’s skull or the barrage of gunfire from SWAT rifles. It didn’t matter.
“Are you hurt?” the SWAT leader asked him.
Jack was looking up at him from the floor. Amir was three feet away, flat on his back, lifeless.
“Sir! Are you hurt?”
Jack could breathe again. “I need to see my wife.”
Epilogue
The autopsy was inconclusive as to the exact cause of Amir’s death, whether it was the blunt trauma to the head or multiple gunshots. That bit of uncertainty didn’t change the headlines:
death penalty lawyer executes twentieth hijacker.
Jack was actually okay with it. Andie was more than okay.
“I’m proud of you,” she said.
It was mutual. The FBI’s Office of Professional Responsibility dismissed Duncan Fitz’s disciplinary complaint against Andie. Under subpoena, Fitz testified that Agent Carter had pressured him to lodge the complaint against Andie so that Carter could use it as a quid pro quo, if needed, in his dealings with Jack: “Pressure your client to give me the information I want, and I’ll get Fitz to withdraw his complaint against your wife.” It wasn’t the most outrageous thing Carter had done in his controversial career, but it was enough to get him reassigned to background checks on low-level government hires for the foreseeable future. The very next day, Fitz filed a voluntary dismissal of the school’s lawsuit. Andie’s good name was restored.
Jack’s meeting with the state and federal prosecutors was more of a mixed bag. He paid one last visit to the detention center to give Xavier the bottom line.
“The good news is that the state attorney dropped all charges against you, including homicide.”
Xavier didn’t jump for joy. His reaction was that of a guy whose head had been held under water for five weeks, and he’d finally been let up for air.
“The other good news is that the US attorney has agreed to bring no charges related to the school shooting.”
“Yesss,” Xavier said, like a tennis player who’d just served an ace. But Jack didn’t smile back, which sent the appropriate message.
“The rest of the news is not so good,” said Jack.
Xavier’s smile faded. “Okay. What’s the bad news?”
“There’s a catch to the Justice Department’s offer. You have to plead guilty to conspiracy in violation of federal antiterrorism laws.”
His mouth fell open, but it took a moment for words to follow. “I don’t understand. I wasn’t the Riverside shooter.”
“We know.”
“Abdul did it. He used my father’s gun to make it look like me.”
“I know.”
“He said he’d kill Mom, Talitha, and Jamal if I didn’t say it was me.”
“I get all of that,” said Jack.
“Then why do I have to plead guilty?”
Jack had given much thought to what he might say in this meeting, but there was no point in sugarcoating it.
“The FBI was listening to everything that was said in the motel room. They heard Amir say you backed out of a plan to blow yourself up in a shopping mall.”
“That’s a lie! He is such a liar! We never talked about anything like that. I would never hurt anyone!”
“I’m sure Maritza would completely back you up on that.”
“Yes! She knows me! She knows that’s not true!”
Jack believed him, if only because it was consistent with Amir’s twisted logic to say the school shooting was Xavier’s fault because he—Molly’s son—didn’t have the courage to be a suicide bomber.
“There’s still a problem,” said Jack.
“I didn’t do anything.”
“That’s the point, Xavier. You did nothing.”
“What was I supposed to do?”
“I can tell
you how the Department of Justice sees it. All this could have been avoided if you had done just one simple thing. If you had just told someone.”
“Told them what?”
“You’re not a stupid kid, Xavier. You knew Amir was up to no good. You knew he was putting thoughts in your head, grooming you for something, even if at the end of the day you wanted no part of it.”
He didn’t deny it. “But I’m eighteen years old.”
“There are a lot of eighteen-year-olds in Arlington National Cemetery. Different people make different choices in the war against terrorism.”
The frustration was all over Xavier’s face, which then turned to worry. “What’s going to happen to me?”
“The government’s offer is two years, with credit for the time spent in here. Your sentence would be served at a minimum security federal correctional facility, which is a heck of a lot better than Florida State Prison. I recommend you take it.”
Xavier was looking at the floor. Jack waited.
“What does my mom think?”
“Why don’t you ask her,” said Jack. “She’d love to hear from you.”
And then there was Maritza.
Everything she’d told Carter about Abdul—and then some—had proven true. It was unusual for a member of the Iraqi Counter Terrorism Service to turn against the US adviser who’d trained him. When Carter asked Abdul to help root out the Khoury family’s suspected connection to al-Qaeda, the FBI had no idea how much Abdul had come to hate America.
Five days after Maritza riddled Abdul’s body with the bullets he deserved, Jack and Andie visited her at the coffee shop. She still worked there, but no longer under an alias. The story of Abdul, phony clerics, and the abuses of Mut’ah had gone viral. Whether she liked it or not, social media had turned “Rusul” into a household name.
“Get you something?” she asked, as she arrived at their booth.
“Can you sit for a second?” asked Jack.
She shrugged, then slid into the booth beside Andie. “What the heck. So what if they fire me. Today’s my last day.”
“Where you going?”
“Not sure yet. Far away from here. Maybe the West Coast.”
“Of Florida?”
“No. I mean far away.”
“Seattle’s a cool city,” said Andie. “And plenty far. That’s where I’m from.”
“Really? Where did you guys meet?”
“Florida,” said Jack.
“Ginnie Springs,” Andie added. “Underwater. In a cave.”
It was only slightly inaccurate.
“That’s a very long story,” said Jack.
Andie turned the conversation back to Rusul. “Wherever you land, we wish you well. But I was wondering. Have you thought about law enforcement?”
“You mean as a career?”
“Yes. You speak Arabic. Your father was CIA. I see you more as FBI. It’s a long road, but you’re still so young.”
Rusul smiled, but then shook her head. “I don’t think so.”
“Why not?”
“I dunno,” she said, looking at Jack. “I was thinking maybe I’d be a lawyer.”
“Oh, dear God,” said Andie.
Jack laughed. “There’s hope for the profession.”
The manager came by. “You on a break, Maritza?”
“Yes. Permanently.” She removed the cap that was part of her uniform and laid it on the table. “And my name is Rusul.”
Acknowledgments
A huge thank-you to my editor, Sarah Stein, and her team at HarperCollins. Richard Pine is the best literary agent in the business, and I am so grateful for all these years together. Janis Koch is so much more than a beta reader. With her wit, love of words, and incredible knowledge of the rules of words, Janis makes me actually look forward to the marked-up galley pages bleeding with good ol’ fashioned fountain pen ink.
This book also seems to be the appropriate place to acknowledge the kindness of strangers my wife and I encountered during our 9/11 experience. I was on a book tour of Australia. Tiffany and I mingled with fellow authors at the Melbourne Book Festival, took in Faust at the Sydney Opera House, climbed the Sydney Harbour Bridge, snorkeled in the Great Barrier Reef, and simply fell in love with Australia. But after seventeen days, we were more than ready to get back to our children for our son’s third birthday—on September 11, 2001. Before leaving the hotel, we got a call from Qantas Airways and turned on the television in time to see the South Tower collapse. All flights were canceled indefinitely.
For days, we and thousands like us followed the same routine: go to airport, get bad news, return to hotel. One morning the line was so long at Sydney Airport that we almost decided to turn around and go back to the hotel without waiting to speak to a ticket agent. We could hear others in line ahead of us getting the same answer: no flights to America. When it was our turn, the ticket agent suddenly did a double take at the screen in front of her and said, “Oh, my God, we’re flying.” The bad news was that the flight was full and we were last on the waiting list. Then she did the most extraordinary thing. This Australian from Australia’s leading airline grabbed the microphone, announced that a flight to Los Angeles was leaving in ninety minutes, and asked if there were any Australians with confirmed reservations who would be willing to give up their seats in favor of Americans who were trying to get home. In a snap, she had a couple of volunteers. Moments later, she had two more. They kept coming.
I don’t know how many Australians stepped forward to help stranded Americans get home that day. But even twenty years later, their kindness toward total strangers still brings a lump to my throat. And from the bottom of my heart, I wish to say, “Thanks, mates.”
—JG
About the Author
James Grippando is a New York Times bestselling author of suspense and the winner of the Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction. Twenty is his twenty-ninth novel. He lives in South Florida, where he is a trial lawyer and teaches Law and Literature at the University of Miami School of Law.
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Also by James Grippando
The Big Lie*
The Girl in the Glass Box*
A Death in Live Oak*
Most Dangerous Place*
Gone Again*
Cash Landing
Cane and Abe
Black Horizon*
Blood Money*
Need You Now
Afraid of the Dark*
Money to Burn
Intent to Kill
Born to Run*
Last Call*
Lying with Strangers
When Darkness Falls*
Got the Look*
Hear No Evil*
Last to Die*
Beyond Suspicion*
A King’s Ransom
Under Cover of Darkness
Found Money
The Abduction
The Informant
The Pardon*
Other Fiction
The Penny Jumper
Leapholes
* A Jack Swyteck novel
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
twenty. Copyright © 2021 by James Grippando, Inc. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
first edition
Cover design by Ervin Serrano
Cover photographs © Wesley Hitt/Getty Images (field); © Aaron Foster/Getty Images (sky)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.
Digital Edition JANUARY 2021 ISBN: 978-0-06-291510-8
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-291508-5
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